After airasia food and ShopeeFood, another big name in Malaysia is jumping on the food delivery hype—Boost. Sure, it’s kind of late to the game in rolling out its own food delivery platform, but as customers, having more choices is usually a good thing.
Called Boost Makan, it’s meant to help Boost’s F&B merchants bring their businesses online without complicated backend processes or expensive fees, its team claims.
Joining the food delivery scene
Merchants can access Boost Makan directly within the Boost Biz merchant app and sign up for the food ordering platform with no onboarding fees imposed for a limited time, but it’s unknown how much commission it will take from transactions.
While Boost has over 380K merchants across Malaysia with a large segment being F&B businesses, it’s also unclear exactly how many F&B merchants are on Boost Makan at the moment.
However, there is a variety of food such as Local, Chinese, Asian, Western, Vegetarian, and Refreshments from eateries like cafes, restaurants, home businesses, food trucks, and more, depending on where you’re located.
There’s supposedly a 20km delivery coverage radius (but expect pricey fees), and users also have the option of pick-up, in-store contactless orders for walk-ins, and drive-thru (where relevant).
Boost Makan is currently offering merchants an RM50 incentive to onboard them, and an RM5 cashback deal for users who begin ordering from the site from now until December 31, 2021.
A decent UI that could be better
After checking out Boost Makan myself, I found the UI to be a tad cluttered. It’s likely because there aren’t too many merchants (within my area) onboarded yet, so to make up for it, Boost displays previews of their menus to fill up the empty spaces.
Once they onboard more, however, the UI should be cleaned up to be more seamless and easier to scroll through.
Another UI complaint I have is that whenever I want to exit my checkout cart to add more items or continue browsing a store, I’m somehow brought back all the way to the Boost homepage. This means I have to keep opening up Boost Makan and finding the merchant again to complete my orders, which is inefficient and can get irritating fast.
There’s also some kind of bug whereby even when I opt to order from a store under Boost Makan’s section called “Cheaper delivery fees” which are RM6 or less, I still may end up paying more than RM6 for delivery.
Do note that to order on Boost Makan, the only payment option you have is to use your Boost Wallet, which is frankly quite limiting if you’re not already a Boost user.
I haven’t tried placing an order yet so I can’t comment further on the service, but for now, it’s clear that Boost Makan is still testing the waters, and we can expect to see more changes take place over the next few weeks.
We’ve reached out to Boost to learn who the third-party delivery partners it’s working with are, as well as to learn more about the commission fees taken, and how many F&B merchants are already on Boost Makan. Once we get the team’s responses, we’ll update the piece.
- Check out our in-depth review of big-name food delivery apps that came out before Boost Makan here.